The Haunting of Hill House (22 page)

“The sun is over the yardarm,” the doctor said happily.

Theodora curled by the fire, looking up wickedly at Eleanor; at the other end of the room the chessmen moved softly, jarring with little sounds against the table, and Theodora spoke gently, tormentingly. “Will you have him at your little apartment, Nell, and offer him to drink from your cup of stars?”

Eleanor looked into the fire, not answering. I have been so silly, she thought, I have been a fool.

“Is there room enough for two? Would he come if you asked him?”

Nothing could be worse than this, Eleanor thought; I have been a fool.

“Perhaps he has been longing for a tiny home—something smaller, of course, than Hill House; perhaps he will come home with you.”

A fool, a ludicrous fool.

“Your white curtains—your tiny stone lions—”

Eleanor looked down at her, almost gently. “But I
had
to come,” she said, and stood up, turning blindly to get away. Not hearing the startled voices behind her, not seeing where or how she went, she blundered somehow to the great front door and out into the soft warm night. “I
had
to come,” she said to the world outside.

Fear and guilt are sisters; Theodora caught her on the lawn. Silent, angry, hurt, they left Hill House side by side, walking together, each sorry for the other. A person angry, or laughing, or terrified, or jealous, will go stubbornly on into extremes of behavior impossible at another time; neither Eleanor nor Theodora reflected for a minute that it was imprudent for them to walk far from Hill House after dark. Each was so bent upon her own despair that escape into darkness was vital, and, containing themselves in that tight, vulnerable, impossible cloak which is fury, they stamped along together, each achingly aware of the other, each determined to be the last to speak.

Eleanor spoke first, finally; she had hurt her foot against a rock and tried to be too proud to notice it, but after a minute, her foot paining, she said, in a voice tight with the attempt to sound level, “I can't imagine why you think you have any right to interfere in my affairs,” her language formal to prevent a flood of recrimination, or undeserved reproach (were they not strangers? cousins?). “I am sure that nothing I do is of any interest to you.”

“That's right,” Theodora said grimly. “Nothing that you do is of any interest to me.”

We are walking on either side of a fence, Eleanor thought, but I have a right to live too, and I wasted an hour with Luke at the summerhouse trying to prove it. “I hurt my foot,” she said.

“I'm sorry.” Theodora sounded genuinely grieved. “You know what a beast he is.” She hesitated. “A rake,” she said finally, with a touch of amusement.

“I'm sure it's nothing to me
what
he is.” And then, because they were women quarreling. “As if
you
cared, anyway.

“He shouldn't be allowed to get away with it,” Theodora said.

“Get away with
what?
” Eleanor asked daintily.

“You're making a fool of yourself,” Theodora said.

“Suppose I'm not, though? You'd mind terribly if you turned out to be wrong this time, wouldn't you?”

Theodora's voice was wearied, cynical. “If I'm wrong,” she said, “I will bless you with all my heart. Fool that you are.”

“You could hardly say anything else.”

They were moving along the path toward the brook. In the darkness their feet felt that they were going downhill, and each privately and perversely accused the other of taking, deliberately, a path they had followed together once before in happiness.

“Anyway,” Eleanor said, in a reasonable tone, “it doesn't mean anything to you, no matter what happens. Why should you care whether I make a fool of myself?”

Theodora was silent for a minute, walking in the darkness, and Eleanor was suddenly absurdly sure that Theodora had put out a hand to her, unseen. “Theo,” Eleanor said awkwardly, “I'm no good at talking to people and saying things.”

Theodora laughed. “What
are
you good at?” she demanded. “Running away?”

Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them; each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question—as “Do you love me?”—could never be answered or forgotten. They walked slowly, meditating, wondering, and the path sloped down from their feet and they followed, walking side by side in the most extreme intimacy of expectation; their feinting and hesitation done with, they could only await passively for resolution. Each knew, almost within a breath, what the other was thinking and wanting to say; each of them almost wept for the other. They perceived at the same moment the change in the path and each knew then the other's knowledge of it; Theodora took Eleanor's arm and, afraid to stop, they moved on slowly, close together, and ahead of them the path widened and blackened and curved.

Eleanor caught her breath, and Theodora's hand tightened, warning her to be quiet. On either side of them the trees, silent, relinquished the dark color they had held, paled, grew transparent and stood white and ghastly against the black sky. The grass was colorless, the path wide and black; there was nothing else. Eleanor's teeth were chattering, and the nausea of fear almost doubled her; her arm shivered under Theodora's holding hand, now almost a clutch, and she felt every slow step as a willed act, a precise mad insistence upon the putting of one foot down after the other as the only sane choice. Her eyes hurt with tears against the screaming blackness of the path and the shuddering whiteness of the trees, and she thought, with a clear intelligent picture of the words in her mind, burning, Now I am really afraid.

They moved on, the path unrolling ahead of them, the white trees unchanging on either side and, above all, the black sky lying thick overhead; their feet were shimmering white where they touched the path; Theodora's hand was pale and luminous. Ahead of them the path curved out of sight, and they walked slowly on, moving their feet precisely because it was the only physical act possible to them, the only thing left to keep them from sinking into the awful blackness and whiteness and luminous evil glow. Now I am really afraid, Eleanor thought in words of fire; remotely she could still feel Theodora's hand on her arm, but Theodora was distant, locked away; it was bitterly cold, with no human warmth near. Now I am really afraid, Eleanor thought, and put her feet forward one after another, shivering as they touched the path, shivering with mindless cold.

The path unwound; perhaps it was taking them somewhere, willfully, since neither of them could step off it and go knowingly into the annihilation of whiteness that was the grass on either side. The path curved, black and shining, and they followed. Theodora's hand tightened, and Eleanor caught her breath on a little sob—had something moved, ahead, something whiter than the white trees, beckoning? Beckoning, fading into the trees, watching? Was there movement beside them, imperceptible in the soundless night; did some footstep go invisibly along with them in the white grass? Where were they?

The path led them to its destined end and died beneath their feet. Eleanor and Theodora looked into a garden, their eyes blinded with the light of sun and rich color; incredibly, there was a picnic party on the grass in the garden. They could hear the laughter of the children and the affectionate, amused voices of the mother and father; the grass was richly, thickly green, the flowers were colored red and orange and yellow, the sky was blue and gold, and one child wore a scarlet jumper and raised its voice again in laughter, tumbling after a puppy over the grass. There was a checked tablecloth spread out, and, smiling, the mother leaned over to take up a plate of bright fruit; then Theodora screamed.

“Don't look back,” she cried out in a voice high with fear, “don't look back—don't look—run!”

Running, without knowing why she ran, Eleanor thought that she would catch her foot in the checked tablecloth; she was afraid she might stumble over the puppy; but as they ran across the garden there was nothing except weeds growing blackly in the darkness, and Theodora, screaming still, trampled over the bushes where there had been flowers and stumbled, sobbing, over half-buried stones and what might have been a broken cup. Then they were beating and scratching wildly at the white stone wall where vines grew blackly, screaming still and begging to be let out, until a rusted iron gate gave way and they ran, crying and gasping and somehow holding hands, across the kitchen garden of Hill House, and crashed through a back door into the kitchen to see Luke and the doctor hurrying to them. “What happened?” Luke said, catching at Theodora. “Are you all right?”

“We've been nearly crazy,” the doctor said, worn. “We've been out looking for you for hours.”

“It was a picnic,” Eleanor said. She had fallen into a kitchen chair and she looked down at her hands, scratched and bleeding and shaking without her knowledge. “We tried to get out,” she told them, holding her hands out for them to see. “It was a picnic. The children . . .”

Theodora laughed in a little continuing cry, laughing on and on thinly, and said through her laughter, “I looked back—I went and looked behind us . . .” and laughed on.

“The children . . . and a puppy . . .”

“Eleanor.” Theodora turned wildly and put her head against Eleanor. “Eleanor,” she said. “Eleanor.”

And, holding Theodora, Eleanor looked up at Luke and the doctor, and felt the room rock madly, and time, as she had always known time, stop.

On the afternoon of the day that Mrs. Montague was expected, Eleanor went alone into the hills above Hill House, not really intending to arrive at any place in particular, not even caring where or how she went, wanting only to be secret and out from under the heavy dark wood of the house. She found a small spot where the grass was soft and dry and lay down, wondering how many years it had been since she had lain on soft grass to be alone to think. Around her the trees and wild flowers, with that oddly courteous air of natural things suddenly interrupted in their pressing occupations of growing and dying, turned toward her with attention, as though, dull and imperceptive as she was, it was still necessary for them to be gentle to a creation so unfortunate as not to be rooted in the ground, forced to go from one place to another, heart-breakingly mobile. Idly Eleanor picked a wild daisy, which died in her fingers, and, lying on the grass, looked up into its dead face. There was nothing in her mind beyond an overwhelming wild happiness. She pulled at the daisy, and wondered, smiling at herself, What am I going to do? What
am
I going to do?

“Put the bags down in the hall, Arthur,” Mrs. Montague said. “Wouldn't you think there'd be someone here to help us with this door? They'll
have
to get someone to take the bags upstairs. John? John?”

“My dear, my dear.” Dr. Montague hurried into the hallway, carrying his napkin, and kissed his wife obediently on the cheek she held out for him. “How nice that you got here; we'd given you up.”

“I
said
I'd be here today, didn't I? Did you ever know me
not
to come when I said I would? I brought Arthur.”

“Arthur,” the doctor said without enthusiasm.

“Well,
some
body had to drive,” Mrs. Montague said. “I imagine you expected that I would drive myself all the way out here? Because you know perfectly well that I get tired. How do you do.”

The doctor turned, smiling on Eleanor and Theodora, with Luke behind them, clustered uncertainly in the doorway. “My dear,” he said, “these are my friends who have been staying in Hill House with me these past few days. Theodora. Eleanor Vance. Luke Sanderson.”

Theodora and Eleanor and Luke murmured civilly, and Mrs. Montague nodded and said, “I see you didn't bother to wait dinner for us.”

“We'd given you up,” the doctor said.

“I believe that I told you that I would be here today. Of course, it is
perfectly
possible that I am mistaken, but it is
my
recollection that I said I would be here today. I'm sure I will get to know all your names very soon. This gentleman is Arthur Parker; he drove me here because I dislike driving myself. Arthur, these are John's friends. Can anybody do something about our suitcases?”

The doctor and Luke approached, murmuring, and Mrs. Montague went on, “I am to be in your most haunted room, of course. Arthur can go anywhere. That blue suitcase is mine, young man, and the small attaché case; they will go in your most haunted room.”

“The nursery, I think,” Dr. Montague said when Luke looked at him inquiringly. “I believe the nursery is one source of disturbance,” he told his wife, and she sighed irritably.

“It does seem to me that you could be more methodical,” she said. “You've been here nearly a week and I suppose you've done
nothing
with planchette? Automatic writing? I don't imagine either of these young women has mediumistic gifts? Those are Arthur's bags right there. He brought his golf clubs, just in case.”

“Just in case of what?” Theodora asked blankly, and Mrs. Montague turned to regard her coldly.

“Please don't let me interrupt your dinner,” she said finally.

“There's a definite cold spot just outside the nursery door,” the doctor told his wife hopefully.

“Yes, dear, very nice. Isn't that young man going to take Arthur's bags upstairs? You do seem to be in a good deal of confusion here, don't you? After nearly a week I certainly thought you'd have things in some kind of order. Any figures materialize?”